Beyond Access: Gender, Intersectionality, And The Law Of Averages In Urban Public Services

Nanditha Kannan

Abstract

Indian cities are often celebrated as engines of growth and opportunity, driven by expanding infrastructure and ambitious urban development projects. However, it can be noticed that access to public spaces and essential services is not experienced uniformly across social groups in such urban dwellings. This article reflects on a research journey that examines gendered inequalities in urban public spaces and services. It has been done through an intersectional lens, focusing on how aggregate measures of development often obscure lived realities.

Drawing from urban policy frameworks, secondary literature, and women’s everyday experiences in metro cities like Chennai, the article argues that the “law of averages” in urban planning measures conceals layered exclusions shaped by gender, caste, class, and occupation. It highlights the need for gender-responsive and informed urban policies that prioritise dignity, safety, and meaningful access over mere physical availability for the masses.

Introduction: When Mere Access Is Not Enough

Urban development discourse in India frequently equates progress with access — access to transport, sanitation, healthcare, water, and public spaces are all seen as macro-level indicators of growth. Cities are measured through indicators of coverage, connectivity, and infrastructure growth, often showcased through large-scale initiatives such as the Smart Cities Mission. Indeed, such measures provide a vital framework to understand where and how funds are invested and whether the projects implemented are able to bring a larger target group under their ambit. Yet, these metrics rarely ask a more fundamental question: access for whom, and under what conditions?

For women and other marginalised groups, the challenge is not simply the presence of infrastructure, but the quality, safety, dignity, and usability of such infrastructure. A public toilet that exists but is unsafe after dark, a bus system that is overcrowded and hostile, or a park that is inaccessible due to social norms does not constitute meaningful access of services and public spaces. This research began with the recognition that urban policy often treats citizens as a homogeneous category, overlooking how gender, caste, ethnicity, etc. need to be studied individually in relation to urban infrastructure policy, and how gender intersects with caste, class, and occupation to shape everyday urban experiences.

The Law of Averages in Urban Policy

One of the central concerns that emerged during the research process was the reliance on aggregate data in urban planning. Urban infrastructure statistics often highlight impressive gains (both at a local and national level) — increased sanitation coverage, expanded transport networks, or improved waste management systems. While these achievements are significant, they operate within the “law of averages”, where overall progress masks deep internal disparities. The studies of several international institutions within India have pointed this out as a significant shortcoming in measuring the implications of policies.

For instance, a city may report high access to sanitation facilities, yet women living in informal settlements may still face long queues, poorly maintained toilets, or fear of harassment. Similarly, improvements in public transport do not automatically translate into safe mobility for domestic workers or street vendors who travel during early morning or late-night hours. These experiences remain invisible in policy assessments because they fall outside conventional metrics of success. Manipulation of metrices is also commonly seen at different levels of government, to garner votes or support from the public.

The law of averages thus becomes a political tool — not intentionally exclusionary, but structurally inadequate. It smooths out differences and complexity, making inequality harder to identify and address than it already is.

Intersectionality and Everyday Urban Exclusion

An intersectional approach reveals that gendered exclusion in urban spaces is never singular. Women’s experiences of public services are shaped by multiple identities and constraints. A middle-class woman may experience discomfort or harassment in public transport, but a lower-class domestic worker may additionally face poverty, surveillance, and/or a lack of alternative options. A street vendor’s access to a public space is negotiated daily through informal arrangements, evictions, and policing, all of which affect women in such occupations more acutely. This is what ‘intersectionality’ refers to.

These layered exclusions become particularly evident in essential services such as water collection, sanitation, and waste management. Women from marginalised communities often bear the responsibility of managing household-level service deficits, turning infrastructural gaps into unpaid labour. However, these gendered burdens (referred to today as ‘unpaid care work’) remain largely unacknowledged in urban planning frameworks.

By focusing only on the provision of infrastructure, policy overlooks how social hierarchies determine who can actually use and benefit from urban services. Intersectionality helps move beyond a binary “women versus men” framework to examine how power operates within gendered groupings themselves.

Subaltern Counter-Publics and Lived Experience

This article also draws conceptual inspiration from Nancy Fraser’s idea of subaltern counter-publics — alternative spaces where marginalised groups articulate their own needs, experiences, and critiques of dominant systems. In the urban context, women’s collectives, informal workers’ unions and trade unions, and grassroots organisations function as subaltern counter-publics that challenge official narratives of inclusion.

The study of these groups is highly useful to this study, as they highlight concerns that rarely enter formal policy debates: unsafe and often inadequate sanitation and transport facilities, lack of resting spaces for women workers, harassment, and exclusion from local decision-making bodies. Their shared knowledge and lived experiences provide crucial insights into how urban services actually function on the ground, at the grassroots level.

Engaging with these perspectives shifts the focus of urban policy from technical efficiency to social justice. It underscores that planning cannot be gender-neutral in societies marked by an already deep-seated structural inequality.

Reflections

A key learning from this research was the importance of listening, not only to data and numbers, but to people. Secondary literature and policy documents reveal what cities claim to do, but lived experiences reveal what cities actually do. Reading about the experiences of women navigating urban spaces made visible the gap between policy intent and policy impact.

Another critical insight was the need to rethink what constitutes success in urban development. If progress is measured only through infrastructure counts, gendered and intersectional exclusions will continue to be treated as peripheral issues rather than central concerns. Many studies point out that lagging social realities such as these is why India is struggling to be at par with more developed countries.

This article by no way means to provide solutions to the existing problem of urban inequality, but rather aims to study how it is directly related to urban policy discourse, and the extent of percolation of such disparity in society.

Towards Gender-Responsive Urban Futures

Addressing gendered inequalities in urban public spaces requires moving beyond token inclusion. Urban policies must integrate gender-disaggregated data, involve women meaningfully in planning processes while placing them in leadership roles, and recognise care work and informal labour as central to urban planning.

Incorporating women into local decision-making bodies, sanitation and water committees, and planning groups can help bridge the gap between policy and practice. More importantly, redefining urban citizenship to include dignity, safety, and autonomy can transform cities into spaces where all residents can thrive.

Conclusion

Urban India stands at a critical juncture, with rapid infrastructure expansion reshaping everyday life. Yet, without addressing the structural inequalities embedded within urban spaces, development risks reproducing exclusion in new forms. By challenging the law of averages and centring intersectional lived experiences, urban policy can move closer to its promise of inclusive growth. Cities must not only be accessible, but just spaces where women and marginalised groups are recognised as full urban citizens, not statistical afterthoughts.

This article draws on existing literature on gender and urban planning, including work by Nancy Fraser on subaltern counter-publics, intersectionality scholarship by Kimberlé Crenshaw, and policy frameworks and reports by MoHUA, UN Women, SEWA, and the World Bank.

About the Author

This blog article is authored by Nanditha Kannan, a third-year BA Economics and Public Policy student at Sastra University, Chennai, with a strong interest in development policy, community leadership, and youth empowerment. She is the founder of நட்பு (Natpu), a youth-led initiative supporting rural children through education, sustainability, and confidence-building programmes.

Acknowledgement: This article was posted by Vatsala Sinha, Research Intern at IMPRI.

Disclaimer: All views expressed in the article belong solely to the author and not necessarily to the organization.